An (In)temporary Measure
by SarcasticShepard
Summary: It takes time to build a FranXX, and even more time to raise and train the pistils and stamen needed to pilot one. Before those first generations of children fought the Klaxosaurs, there was another group, no less dedicated, but still destined to be forgotten. This is the story of the last of their numbers.
1. When was the End?

"As I understand it, regardless of the original timetable, _they_ have not kept to any of the models you developed. That leaves me with a situation that is...troublesome."

"... … … …?"

"The theories and techniques are developed, reasonably sound, and have been tested—objective word is _tested_, not _proven_. While a few successful trials and simulations are good news, the real world can be, hm, unpredictable no matter the how well controlled."

"... … … …"

"Having drawn them up, I am fully aware of the timetables this operation requires on a per-generation basis."

"... …? … …. … …"

"A decade and a half each assumes that the failure and attrition rates low enough that we can replace squads without dipping into untrained codes. And no, I believe we'll have heavy losses on both ends for the first ones generations, until we can fine tune the rearing and training processes."

"... …! …?"

"It's not my job of what to do in the meantime; I operated as you told me, on the timetable you set. If you truly want my opinion, I would simply use up the current solution we have in place."

"... …. ..."

"You already called them a waste of resources to develop, yet they have exceeded the life expectancy you estimated. Despite my initial misgivings on that dead end, they have proven an ample stopgap."

"... …? ...?"

"I never anticipated any of them surviving to meet the fruits of my labors, though their survival remains impressive. You already consider them irrelevant, do you not? Relics of a world that has long since ended? Only, try not to burn them out too quickly—I'll still be following the original timetable you set."

* * *

On the shore of a dry lake, in a forest of rusting steel, I could look out over the bones of a world that had long since ended. I had seen it when it was alive, watched the green and blue of the land leach away into dead browns and grays and listened as the sounds of birds and animals were swallowed up by the static crackle and hiss of the wind. I could not say when either of these had happened; only that one day I had realized that I had not heard flapping of wings for a great length of time, that I could only recall seeing greenery in the aquaculture gardens and painted on the walls of the hangars.

Somehow, I had missed out on the end of the world.

If this sounded all rather poetic, it's more that I had free time to spend reading books collected from demolished libraries, rather than any natural talent. All the Pilots had lots of free time, in between the hours of intensity that proved our worth. Supposedly, taking up a hobby was the best way to de-stress, according to the physicians. In any case, I wasn't as mobile as most of the other pilots, so I ended up with the more sedentary hobbies.

For example, floating in the pool. Well, that was a lie on both counts. To begin with, the pool wasn't really a pool; it was what once had been a decorative fountain, complete with old sprinkler fixtures, and a few years of refurbished parts to make it into a waist-deep wading pool. Also, I didn't float unless I had a flotation vest on, courtesy of the almost twenty pounds of circuit and metal grafted onto bone and through soft tissue. More due to how the weight was distributed, floating around in the pool was more comfortable than sitting around.

"Well good morning, lifeguard."

I tilted my head back to survey the voice.

"Ha. Mornin' Ket."

Ket was about fifty years my senior, an observation only obvious if one compared her sleeker, older model of implants to my bulkier set. That said, she certainly didn't act as if she was a half century older than me.

Hopping in, the water barely lapped at her hips despite her being one of the tallest Pilots on base. Well, tallest living Pilots. She snagged a flotation vest of her own from the stack on the edge of the former fountain, and sunk down to float as well—though she was much higher in the water than I.

"You didn't sleep in here, did you?"

"Not a chance. Still paranoid I'll drown in my sleep or something like that."

Ket laughed, a boyish sound that echoed off the dust-scarred windows. "You're a Pilot, and you're worried about drowning, of all things?"

"Well," it did sound silly now that I had actually said it, "…you have a point."

Both of us bobbed silently for a few moments, the only sounds being water slapping at the sides of the fountain.

"Heard the high and mighty were doing more tests at the plantation."

"Heard the same." Ket replied, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. "Also heard that nothing came of them."

"Mm. I'd think they would've checked ground conditions more before building the plantation where they did."

"According to my partner, they did. Then the lake dried up and did something to the ground, hence why they can't move it."

This was not the first time we had held this conversation; we had probably held it maybe once every other year or so when the eggheads ran more tests.

Somebody had screwed up big tine on that. The plantation had been freshly built on the first night I had arrived in this dead city, and though I had never set foot in it, the massive mobile fortress-city-thing towered over our KCUs enough for me to feel smaller than a bug. Naturally, the plantation was motionless: it hadn't moved since its construction had been completed, in total opposition to its actual purposelong before I had ended up here. Even so, it still looked factory fresh, the white of its dome appearing immune to the dust attempting to coat everything reddish brown.

That reminded me.

"Any word on your KCU yet, Ket?"

"Not since the support crew told me the elbow actuator was shot. Any word on yours?"

I shook my head with a splash. "Soval's been working with the Engineers on that. Last he told me, they replaced some hull cameras and recalibrated the targeting software."

"This fuckin' sucks." Ket wasn't in my field of vision, but I heard her smack the water angrily. "That puts us at minus two. Minus four if you include the fact that we've been at less than full strength for too long."

Once again, Ket was right. _Mauler_ and _Daybreaker_ now only occupied space in the form of salvaged spare parts and a pair of holographic memorials in the hallway outside the combat information center. Nobody had been able to prevent the inevitable for them, and their loss only made the next loss that much more likely.

"Rest easy, you four." I muttered, my voice barely audible above the sound of sloshing water.

I heard Ket repeat the same next to me.

It was too quiet. Not in the pool room, but in general. No Klaxosaur contacts for nearly two weeks, no outdoor drills in more than a month. There was just too little to do outside of combat sim and sitting around.

"Think anything'll happen today?" Ket sounded as if she was reading my mind.

"Odds are just as good as they were yesterday." I hauled myself upright, feeling the pull of gravity on my implants as I stood. "Probably low."

Unwilling to stay standing for the moment, I sat down on the edge and draped a towel over my shoulders. Not that it was too essential; between the synthskin and link implants on my back and head, water tended to just bead right off. Looking at my wrist as if I wore a watch, my optical implants projected a time and date. The date was irrelevant—nobody used that format any more—but it was too early in the day to feel this awake.

"Attention. All KCU Pilots and Strikers, report to the CIC. Message repeat. All KCU Pilots and Strikers, report to the CIC."

"Your cochlear go off as well?" Ket looked to me from where she bobbed.

I nodded. The complex devoted to us and our KCUs was a sprawl too large to easily install intercoms, and anybody working in or on a KCU had a cochlear implant for safety purposes. So, command simply used the easier method.

"Eff this." Ket climbed to her feet and caught the towel I tossed her. "Always when I get comfortable, dammit."

"Probably jinxed it when you asked me the odds of something happening."

Ket only rolled her eyes in irritation.

Before we could set foot in the CIC we had to don our flight suits, regardless of whether this was a false alarm or not. Both of us headed for the pilot's locker room.

"Well, didn't know you'd be gearing up for this." Murai could've moved her locker to any one of the other empty ones, "Thought a KCU had to be able to aim straight to be considered field ready."

"And yet, here I am. Being worn down by the sandpaper of your personality."

It took her a moment to realize the insult.

"Hey! You can't just—"

"I did." Then, pointing at the laces of her undersuit. "And you're putting on your G-suit backwards."

Her eyes worked furiously, flicking back between me and the mistake I had pointed out.

As I focused on lacing my own suit tight, I heard a curse stretched several syllables long as she stripped back down to wear her gear the right way. Murai was good, certainly a better pilot than me, but out of the cockpit she was a bit absent-minded and fairly abrasive.

"Hey, Coda?" I turned to my other neighor, "Could you pull the lace for my arm out of my collar? I think it tangled again."

"Yeh, one sec."

He cinched tight the lacing around his thigh before reaching for my collar.

"Oh." He fiddled for a moment. "Undo your neck lacing a bit, wouldja?"

I complied, unhooking the offending wire straps. Once upon a time, a fellow pilot long dead had described our flight suits as a full-body corset crossed with bondage outfit. Whatever either of those were. All I know was that the flight suits had enough lacing and tight synthetic weave to keep anybody in a KCU conscious through rough maneuvers, with tubing and wires for homeostatic regulation and telemetry.

I couldn't say a flight suit looked like anything more than a flight suit anymore than I could describe my dress blues or my dayware as looking like anything else except itself. I couldn't remember anything except those three uniforms. There had been a time, once, maybe, probably, where I had worn something else. I could not remember what; all that was from before I had been Socketed.

"Aaand here. We. Go."

The pressure suddenly subsided, and a cable was dangled in front of my face.

"Easy enough." Returning to his locker, Coda nodded encouragingly. "The end of it was tangled with your... E2 socket, I think."

"Ah. Thanks..." I couldn't help but look down.

Coda and his striker, Veldt, both had the Alpha-code series, the first and best. I was one of the last—Delta-code series—supposedly offering better performance, but I had seen the actual numbers. In theory, the the final series of Theta-code was the best, but we all knew the reality. Once the resources had been diverted to the Plantations, the other code classes were built with cheaper materials.

In short, everything after Alpha-code was increasingly expendable.

Not that it kept us from trying to stay alive.

"Record time into your suit, Ruko." Toka nodded as we stepped into the cladding stations.

"Had a little help from Coda this time." I admitted, stepping onto the marked foot prints. "You win this round."

I reached up to grip the handles and triggered the cladding machine. Almost scarily fast, the appendages extended from the wall and began layering on telemetry wiring up and down my chest and around the openings for my socket array, as if etching a circuit board. After that, magnetically adhered tubing was laid onto the tracks drawing a maze over my suit—compression gel to keep my body temperature down and prevent me from blacking out from g-forces. The ends of both snapped onto a carry case, which would circulate gel to keep me cool and send data back to the CIC. It was still heavy as hell though, with the handle digging into my hand. Out of habit, I cranked it down to the coldest setting, since I always felt as if I was about to overheat.

That, and the CIC was as uncomfortably warm as it ever was. The long and low room was dim and grim, stifling conversation as we entered. Even so, I locked eyes with Soval from his side of the room, sharing a brief glance before we sat for the briefing, Pilots on one side of the room and Strikers on the other, with the back half filled with orange-glowing terminals for the ghostly forms of KCU support teams.

There was a polite cough from the front of the room, prompting dead silence but for the hum of electronics. Then, the light slid a few shades closer to pitch black and the Defensive Coordinators stepped in frond of the briefing screen.


	2. Plug Me In

"The primary nature of this operation will be that of an escort, evolving into defense at operation completion."

As usual, the Defensive Coordinator had started in on the briefing before the projector had enough time to boot up.

"Currently, we have an emergent situation, For this, you'll be making a sortie outside the exclusion zone—"

A quiet murmur rose from the middle of the room.

_Outside the zone?_

_Been a long time since something like this._

_Bad, bad news._

The exclusion zone was so named due it being a place—perhaps the only place—where Klaxosaurs didn't emerge. Maybe the ground conditions that kept the Plantation from moving scared them as much as it did us, or perhaps the dead and buried infrastructure proved to be too much for them to work through. In any case, leaving the exclusion zone was a step away from relative safety into definite danger.

The DeeCee, ignoring the disquiet, finally noticed that the projector was still booting and brought it up to power with a few taps at her electroslate.

Behind her buzz-cut hair, the map winked into existence as a tangle of orange red and green lines. To the north—the crater that was once a lake, to the south—the flat and and dead lands, and in between the two—the rusting heart of our home. Once, there had been a white circle to denote the plantation, but somebody had since erased it from the map. Now the only white was if the Defensive Coordinator's sleeves got in the way of the holo array.

I didn't remember when the white circle had been removed.

"Our objective is currently en route, and while not yet in KCU escort range is currently being engaged by five Mohoro-class and an unknown quantity of Conrad class, estimated to be around fifty. Seismophone data suggests at least one more Mohoro underground, though not in close proximity." A green circle lit up, southwest of the city—our objective. "Currently, they are holding their own, but the situation is barely stable. In short, they are moving to us, and we will be assisting in their approach and emplacement."

More muttering.

If the objective was capable of 'holding its own' then it definitely wasn't the usual chain of orange orbs that hauled magma fuel from the mines.

I locked eyes with Soval from his side of the room. He seem unconcerned by all this, uncaring even. About normal for him—his preferred worries center on known unknowns, like miscalibrated software.

_Don't worry about it, _his look said, _they'll tell us eventually._

"Due to the distances involved, we'll be sending you out with reduced ammunition loads and auxiliary endothermic cores to maximize range. We will transition into a static defense once the objective reaches here-" A dotted line traced a path to the edge of the exclusion zone nearest the city, "-at which point you will be able to rearm at both the Bunker and the Plantation as needed."

_Plantation._

Whatever was said next was drowned out in the chattering that seemed to fill the entire room. Even the support teams seemed to have gotten in on the reveal reaction.

For me this was new, like _new_ new; I had never seen a Plantation besides the one sitting motionless in the city, and now I had the opportunity to actually go inside one! So what if it was only to rearm, it was still a first, and still the most novel thing that had happened in the last decade.

The DeeCee shut us all up though, slamming a fist onto the the projector housing with a sound like a gunshot, and bringing the room back down to sheepish near silence.

"There will be splits into groups of two for this operation," she continued as if nothing had happened, "as you will be traveling up to and beyond the exclusion zone, there will be no field rearm available and any recovery will be slow should a KCU be disabled. Currently we're on the tail end of a dust storm, so part of the operation will be in low-vis conditions. Outside of that, temperature and wind readings are stable, so keeping your cores hot shouldn't be an issue, barring any sudden changes to conditions. Detailed ground conditions are being mapped and will be set before you launch. Good luck, and dismissed."

No longer required to keep silent for the briefing, the whole room came back to life with chatter.

_A plantation!_

_Why are they here?_

_It's been so long._

_When did we last see other KCUs?_

_We could be relocated..._

I couldn't help but share in every idea I heard as we filtered from the CIC. My own thoughts?

"I dunno, Soval."

"Really?" He swapped hands to hold his case so that we could walk more closely together. "All that reading and research only to have no particular thought? Come on, you're better than that."

"Well, it's strange, I'll say that much." I turned slightly to allow Ket and her Striker hurry ahead of us. "I just don't have inkling as to why. The two of us have never seen a Plantation here after all—could be here for anything."

"Yeah, but that's why the speculation is fun, right?"

"Maybe." I shrugged, as we stepped into the decontamination chamber before the garage. "I just don't see the point in trying to piece together a reason when we don't have any concrete data. Speaking of the data, how's that targeting issue going?"

We passed through the chamber without stopping; it was only used for returning from the field, since it didn't really matter if we brought dirt into the wasteland. I had heard that the Plantations had the whole garage set up to decontaminate. Definitely made life easier and safer for the Engeneering crews. The process was less for our sake and more for theirs; I knew a few biological changes had been included in my regimen to become a Pilot specifically to survive outdoors.

"Well, I won't lie and say we're fully in the green, but I made sure you'll be able to see straight." He clapped me on the shoulder. "C'mon Ruko, I've made sure we're all set! And besides, Defender is looking better than ever!"

Releasing me, he gestured upwards.

I had to admit, the sight always awakened something in my chest. Not awe or or pride—though both would be appropriate—nor fear or apprehension—though the two would be understandable.

Lit up from all angles, Defender towered above us as forty meters of the best engineering and materials mankind could offer. Its neighbors were no less impressive—or perhaps more impressive, depending on preference—but I only had eyes for that one KCU.

"Giving Defender lover's eyes again?" Soval laughed, nudging me.

I chuckled in reply, but Soval wasn't really wrong.

I didn't look at Defender like I looked at the other KCUs, or even at other pilots. True, it didn't have the same armaments waiting in its rack as the heavy fire units, or the same mounting points for polyceramic armor, but that wasn't important. But it wasn't important; Defender was mine, my weapon, my machine, my body.

Stepping onto the elevator platform with Soval, I watched as our neighboring crew, Loras and Cora stepped close to their KCU and paused long enough to briefly lay their free hands on one of the feet of their unit. Didn't know why they did that, and I had never been social enough with Loras to ask him why he did that. Soval was kind of a buddy with Cora, but if he had known why, he hadn't told me. For luck? To keep up a tradition? Did they just like the feeling of the metal beneath their fingers?

The platform jolted to a halt level with the walkway stretching across the chest of Defender, roughly, because the proportions were oh-so-slightly off the human norm.

"You ready?" Soval asked, as we made our was to the midpoint of the platform. "You're breathing a little heavy."

I knew my heart was racing; I could feel my pulse squeezing down my arms as if I was standing under the decontamination shower at full blast. Unhealthy.

"I'm fine. Just. One sec."

"You sure?" I knew his 'concerned partner' tone. "We can take a moment if you need to level off."

Soval also had access to my biometrics.

"...Yeah." No point in making him worry.

Facing the access hatch, I held a breath and counted down from five, willing myself to come back to center. It took three cycles before the pulse subsided enough that it would hopefully placate my partner. Soval at last nodded and thumped the cherry red button on the bridge console.

Armored plates slid and tilted, folding out to reveal the 'heart' of the KCU, as much one could consider it; a titanium-gray orb. I pulled the mechanism for the main hatch—a spring loaded lever that snapped back into place—and stepped back as a slab of metal as thick as my shinbone was tall hissed downward.

Now it was my turn to ask Soval if he was ready.

"For you Ruko, always." And then he climbed in.

Not that it could've been done any other way, Soval's melodrama aside. If I was to climb into the cockpit first, the only way for Soval to climb in would be fairly uncomfortable for both us us.

With Soval settled into his spot and flipping on the interior panorama screens, I slotted my carry case next to his beneath the bridge controls and leveraged myself into my spot. Where Soval got to sit up straight, I was borderline on my hands and knees, strapped into a molded cradle that held most of my torso. The primary purpose of this setup was to keep the Pilot's body motionless while the KCU moved. According to Soval, it also gave an uncomfortably good view of my butt. Coda had only shrugged when I had told him, though Ket had scrunched up her face and told me I was lucky that Soval and I were guys.

What almost hurt was Soval ratcheting the straps tight. He always did that. I didn't bother saying anything about it; it had been his routine since our first sortie. Instead, I watched as the hatch crept shut, then looked down to watch the little indicators on my screen went green, one by one, as Soval and the KCU ran through its diagnostics. I didn't have anything to do here; Soval was the one responsible for taking care of me up to and after this point.

The few controls I had at my fingertips were mostly preset from the last sortie; g-suit coolant temperature set as low as it could go, screen brightness set all the way up. Only two other controls were at my disposal here, but I wasn't quite ready for those yet.

"Ruko, I'm going to start plugging you in."

"Okay."

Off to my left, I could hear the sound of the heavy cables being unspooled.

"Be gentle, please."

I didn't know what prompted me to say something that vulnerable. Soval was always as gentle as he could with the plugs.

"I know."

The only red lights now were the two rows of indicators for the sockets.

The A and B socket sets were the lowest, mounted right at the bottom of my ribcage and two ribs higher. Painless. Mostly.

Socket pair C and D were set right between my shoulder blades, and were a little worse than stubbing a toe.

"Don't squirm," Soval warned after he had done the C pair, "you know that only makes it worse. Just use the restraints."

I didn't like using the restraints. The intended use was, again, to keep my body from moving when I was operating the KCU but they were also useful for keeping uncomfortable pilots motionless during the socketing process.

"Attention, all KCUs. General scramble alert. Repeat. Attention, all KCUs. General scramble alert."

"Dammit." I hissed, realizing we didn't have time to be gentle. "Just do it quick."

I triggered the restraints, inflatable cuffs pinning me at the ankles and knees, then at the elbows and wrists, with a one final inflatable keeping my head motionless. Like this, I could remain in place even if the whole KCU was flipped upside down.

It also kept me from writhing all over the cockpit when Soval finished with the D sockets and plugged the E and F sockets at the base and middle of my neck.

"Socketing…confirmed." I panted, doing the best I could to keep the pain-induced queasiness from twisting my guts into knots. "Pulse in the green. Initiating…uplink."

Except nothing happened when I depressed the last of the controls I had.

"Ruko! Take a moment, just to—"

"No!" He was not going to slow me down now, not when I was this close. "You heard them. We. Need. To. Go."

From behind me, a sigh emanated. Soval was ever caring, but he also knew what our duty was. Protect the Plantation, protect the Bunker, live to repeat the first two as long as possible. The whole cockpit lit bright as day; the screens lighting up with a high-resolution image of the garage and the access bridge folding away.

Shutting my eyes, I mentally ticked down the seconds. There was no particular need to do that, but the uplink process was a bit disorientating regardless of how prepared I was. Like a switch being flipped, there was the feeling of tumbling in freefall and then the sensation of standing upright.

My vision winked to life. The walls of the KCU enclosure were uncomfortably close, as ever.

" Neural hijack reading green." Soval's voice had taken on a wispy, distant quality. "Sync is holding at eighty-five. Looks good on my end. Ruko, how's the connection?"

It all felt good, no numbness, no tingling, no queasiness coursing through my guts. Though, like this I didn't exactly have an analog to a digestive system. I raised a hand, careful to not scrape it against the encroaching wall and watched carefully as I flexed my fingers, watching as the chisel-like fingertips caught the overhead lights. No lag—also good.

[Everything feels good here, Soval.] No KCU had a lungs or a larynx; all communication was done wirelessly, direct to cochlear. [Am I armed and ready?]

"All green on our end. Reduced munitions and extra cores. The KV-2 is ready to grab on your right."

[Got it. Feels a little light with that reduced load.]

Mid to short-range coilgun, accurate to a thousand meters, computerized fire with secondary manual override. Two munition types in a tandem integrated magazines and pile bunker bayonet. The things we learned in training had been all but been scribbled onto my brain with permanent marker.

A buzz wound through my hand when I retrieved it from the slot, confirmation that it had been recognized and was now feeding telemetry to Soval as he sat inside my chest.

[CIC, this is Defender. We are green.]

"Confirmed, Defender. Please stand by for garage release."

At least we weren't the last one ready. That particular distinction was a toss-up between Fletcher and Kruiser. Insert joke about long-range KCUs taking the longest to get ready. The joke had been done to death several times over, the reference only appearing in my head out of habit.

[How light are we running on ammo anyway?] I queried Soval over internal communications.

"Twenty rounds each in the KV, ten in the shoulder launcher. One spare blade for the lance."

[Oof.] Half the usual then, technically less than that if I cared enough to do the math.

That was Soval's job—he handled the complex items; targeting, firing solutions, detailed sensor readings. My role was direct control of the KCU on a fine level and with the Sockets basically hijacking my nervous system, I could do so with incredible precision.

"At-ten-shon! All KCUs, prepare for deployment. Ground crews, clear the garage floor." The normally cool voice of the Defensive Coordinator took on a much more commanding tone. "Garage doors open in sixty. According to plan, we'll have you home by nightfall."

It was the last of the moments where she'd have full control over the operation. After this, we'd be in the field and the usual saying applied there.

[No plan survives contact with the enemy. Anybody else have a feeling this isn't going to end well?] That was Cobalt's Pilot and resident paranoid pessimist, Toka.

[Dunno,] I replied over the KCU comms, [but I was just thinking of that as well.]

[It's out of the E.Z. Nothing is straightforward when we're outside the boundary.] Loras' KCU, Kruiser, was set for longer range engagements, so the weight stuff must've hit him hard. [Stay sharp and don't risk anything: they can repair a Plantation easier than us.]

An air horn blared, overriding further casual conversation as the garage lights ticked over to warning orange. When the doors started to rise, the whole garage was flooded with gray-orange dust and grit. I switched to advanced optics without a second thought, losing color in exchange for cutting out the interference from the storm.

[Figures.] Toka as Cobalt, again. [So much for the tail end of the storm.]

"Cobalt, we're on mission clock. Stow the chatter." Veldt, the Striker for Loras, took his usual position as the team coordinator. "We're going to roll at a dead sprint to the plantation and re-coordinate from there. Stay in formation in transit."

Loras was basically a mute in the field anyway, despite probably being the most experienced person we had. Go figure.

"KCU team, this is the CIC, doors are open; you are go for deployment. See you all again soon."

Without a second thought, I took my first steps out into the storm.


End file.
